5. Minqin County, China
via capetown.china-consulate.org
It’s a bleak day when a government throws its hands up and classifies a region as an “ecological disaster area”. Minqin, located in the north-west of China, was once an agricultural settlement whose fields were supplied by the Shiyang River. These days, due to irrigation upstream, the river has all but dried up.
As the county is surrounded on two sides by the Badain Jaran and Tengger Deserts, the desert sands have steadily encroached on the farmlands. An effort to plant 87,000 hectares of forest land failed as the water shortage quickly reduced it to only 20,000 hectares in 2009.
Now, Minqin has been reduced to only 60 sq miles of fertile land with the desert still steadily approaching. It is estimated that the area will be completely obliterated within the next decade.
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